Tag Archive: Chemicals

I’m sure many of you have heard of West Virginia’s water spill back in January but there’s probably some stories you haven’t heard.

Yes, inmates at the South Central Regional Jail were forced to drink contaminated water, given only between 1-3 8oz bottles of clean water per
day, served food cooked in contaminated water, threatened with medical isolation if they went to the infirmary and punished with isolation when
they demanded clean water by doing a sit in.

At Stories From South Central West Virginia you can read the stories of how the south central regional jail poisoned their inmates, dehydrated them, threw them in solitary, punished them for seeking medical help, denied their medical needs and have continued their oppression of these inmates since the water spill in January in a multitude of ways.

The inmates are seeking long-term medical help and legal representation but most imminently they want their stories heard. Please read the stories of these inmates, friends and family members. Please spread this website and get their stories out.

When roughly 10,000 gallons of chemicals leaked into a West Virginia watershed this January, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency. Officials shut down schools, deployed the National Guard, and rallied volunteers to bring water and support to the 300,000 people without potable water.

But in the state’s emergency response, there was one group that many forgot: the 429 prisoners locked in Charleston’s overcrowded jail, who were entirely dependent on the state to provide them clean water.

The only article that looked at the spill’s impact on inmates was a small, glowing report published two months later in the Charleston Daily Mail. Jail officials trumpeted their success at “protecting” inmates by providing a “plentiful supply of bottled water.”

Joe DeLong, executive director of the West Virginia Regional Jail Authority, told the paper inmates were given eight bottles of water a day and that they had “essentially no access to the contaminated water.” Before the jail returned to using tap water on January 18, DeLong said the jail went through a “very extensive” flushing process that lasted two to three days. They said they weren’t aware of any inmates reporting health problems related to chemical exposure.

In many ways, the jail seemed to be one of the safest places in Charleston after the spill. Except that much of it wasn’t true. (more…)